Levac’s Photos Expose Israel’s Bus 300 Cover-Up

In 1984, Shin Bet agents killed four men captured alive after they hijacked a bus. Alex Levac photographed the scene, but when an agent demanded his film, he handed over an unused roll instead. The pictures he kept became evidence of an incident falsely reported and covered up at the time. That collision—between the camera, the state’s account and the images themselves—sits at the heart of “Alex Levac: Black Box,” now showing at the Eyal Ofer Pavilion, an annex of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art.

The retrospective presents about 250 photographs by Levac, now 82, who has spent six decades photographing Israeli life. It opened on October 27, Israel’s election day, and runs through May 1, 2027. The museum’s curatorial team chose the opening date. The exhibition brings together conflict coverage and Levac’s photographs of everyday absurdities, asking visitors to look at what has changed—and what the selection presents as stubbornly unresolved.

The image the apparatus couldn’t control

Levac’s photograph of Majdi Abu Jamah, one of the hijackers, shows the final moments of his life. News photographers at the scene, including Levac, captured the incident’s first moments; Levac said he wasn’t sure what his pictures showed. He refused to surrender the images he had taken, saying he did not want to violate journalistic ethics. The unused roll bought him time, while the photograph that remained in his possession later became one of his best-known images.

The scandal caused upheaval within the Shin Bet, the judicial system, the media and the government. The exhibition uses the affair to reflect on how the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has shaped the country. Here, the state’s account is not the only record on display. A photograph preserved against an agent’s demand complicates the official version without needing a speech from anyone in power.

A camera pointed at violence

Levac returned to Israel in 1981 after studying photography in London. Earlier, he had travelled through Brazil, described in the article as a country of great natural beauty governed under military rule. His photographs from Brazil and London include punks on a London street and a village tea party, alongside his first collection of black-and-white gelatin silver prints, which he developed himself.

A placard quotes Levac: “In London, I understood that the camera lets you express yourself in relation to particular social phenomena.” He also said: “To photograph exactly the kind of things I find repugnant — racism, violence — you still have to photograph them. I hoped the camera had a power that could, if not change things, at least show what hadn't been seen before.” Curator Tamara Abramovitch put it plainly: “He shows that you can photograph things you hate.”

After his return, Levac covered the First Lebanon War, a flare-up of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the First Intifada, the Oslo Accords, the 1995 assassination of prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and the Second Intifada. The photographs include young Palestinians throwing stones during the First Intifada, two boys at Rabin’s grave, and a poster declaring Baruch Goldstein a hero. The article describes Goldstein as a religious extremist who perpetrated the February 25, 1994, massacre at the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

The record keeps going

The upper section includes Levac’s more recent Ha’aretz work: “The 21st Century,” photographs in the weekend supplement, and “The Twilight Zone,” his weekly work with columnist Gideon Levy reporting on violence and injustice against Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. Levac is still working and photographing. The exhibition invites Israelis to reflect on the country’s past as they await the election’s outcome. Its photographs do not settle that past. They keep the evidence in view.